By PATRICK MEEHAN, Centenary Assistant AD for Communications
The No. 5 Centenary College STUNT team blanked ninth-ranked Hiram College 14-0 on Thursday evening in Ohio as the Ladies recorded their fifth win of the season inside Price Gymnasium.
The Ladies moved up to fifth from eighth in the country in the first Division III poll of the regular season on Wednesday after being eighth in the preseason rankings.
“I’m so proud of the way the Ladies played against Hiram tonight,” said Centenary head coach Kaylee King. “They had kind of a rough start in the game versus Muskingum, the No. 2 team in the country, in our second face off. We did tie them for a point and went within two points on two different times against them. But we played much better against Hiram and had a great overall performance.”
The Ladies will head east today for the Warrior Invitational this weekend in East Stroudsburg, Pa. Centenary will face East Stroudsburg, Albright College, Randolph College, and Misercordia on Saturday and Sunday to wrap up its season.
They recorded a pair of shutout wins against the Aquinas College Saints, blanking them 12-0 in both games, earlier this week, in a Monday night double face off in Grand Rapids, Mich.
The Ladies continued their impressive play on their lengthy road trip in the Midwest, one that is taking them to four different states over 10 days and featuring 12 games.
Centenary tallied its first win of the season last Saturday, 12-2 against the University of Olivet in a 16-round game and then edged sixth-ranked Heidelberg University 8-6 in the Saint Mary’s Valentine Classic in South Bend, Ind.
LACROSSE: The Gents put on another offensive show on Sunday as they breezed past the Brevard College Tornados by a score of 28-2 in Brevard, N.C.
Centenary (4-0) remained unbeaten after a perfect road weekend which began on Saturday with a 29-7 rout over the Warren Wilson College Owls in Swannanoa, N.C. Centenary’s 29 goals on Saturday set a program record for goals in a game.
The Gents entered the weekend as the top offense in the country and proved themselves worthy of the ranking and then some after two days in North Carolina. The Maroon and White now have a whopping 105 goals, 69 assists, and 152 points. Sophomore Noah Walsh tallied a program-record 14 assists in Sunday’s win.
Centenary is back home on Saturday to face Huntingdon College (1 o’clock) at Atkins Field.
BASEBALL: The Diamond Gents fell 5-2 to the George Fox University Bruins on Thursday evening in the opener of a four-game weekend series in Newberg, Ore., at the Curtis and Margaret Morse Athletic Fields.
Centenary (3-6) and the Bruins (1-3) will continue the series on Friday with a doubleheader beginning at 1. The series finale is set for Saturday at 2.
Centenary finished with seven hits, two walks, nine strikeouts, two errors, and left 11 on base while George Fox had six hits, did not draw a walk, struck out seven times, made one error, and left three on base.
Junior shortstop Vance Sartor led the Centenary offense with a season-high three hits and senior second baseman Clay Menard had two. Sophomore centerfielder Blaine Birkelbach and sophomore third baseman Aron Gillum, a former Captain Shreve HS star, each had one hit, and Gillum drew a walk and scored.
GYMNASTICS: The Centenary gymnastics team posted a season-high team score of 191.750 last Sunday afternoon in a Midwest Independent Conference dual meet against the Texas Woman’s University Pioneers inside the Gold Dome.
The Pioneers won the meet with a 196.100 on a special day in the Gold Dome as Sunday’s meet was the Ladies’ annual Alumnae Meet/Sylvia Keiter Memorial Meet.
Junior Olivia Williams had an impressive meet as she set a new career high on bars with a 9.75 to finish in a tie for third place. Williams also tied her season high on floor (9.75) to place sixth but the meet for her was highlighted by her career best on bars.
SWIMMING: The Centenary swimming teams completed the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championships last Saturday with the Ladies finishing sixth and the Gents seventh in Garland, Texas.
The Ladies earned 265 points and the Gents tallied 258 at the four-day event to conclude the season. Sophomore Bailey Allemeier earned a runner-up finish and All-SCAC honors in the championship \final of the 1650 free as she swam a time of 19:04.70 and junior Cicely Jackson finished eighth (19:51.15). Sophomore Parker Randolph, a former Captain Shreve Gator, had the Gents’ top finish in the championship final of the 1650 free as he swam a time of 18:32.83 to place 10th.
Allemeier also earned an eighth-place finish in the Championship Final of the 200 Yard Backstroke (2:26.02) and Jackson’s eighth-place finish in the 200-Yard Butterfly (2:34.22) led the way in that event for the Ladies. Sophomore Adam Stelly finished eighth in the 200 Fly Championship Final (2:06.23).
Contact Patrick at pmeehan@centenary.edu